


Beautiful Solution

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-06
Updated: 2005-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:58:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River knows where she's not wanted, and, more importantly, where she <i>is.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful Solution

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to hermionesviolin for looking it over and to mousapelli for listening to my wibbling.

River tips her head back gasping, begging, _Please_ , she thinks, and, "Please," she whispers, all other words fled for the moment, except for _please_ and _Mal_ and _please_ again, bursting from her lips like bright blue butterflies as he pushes down the pretty, pink, cotton underwear Kaylee bought her on Persephone so he can slip his fingers between her legs. His breath is hot against her neck -- he never looks at her when they do this, though she thinks maybe he should, she thinks she'd like that -- and she pulls his shirt out of his trousers so she can touch him, make him shiver and moan the way he's making her.

He sucks in a quivering breath when her fingers dance along his belly, but for the first time since they've started this, he doesn't stop her; he lets her touch him, lets her give him something back for everything he's given her.

He doesn't understand, though she tries to tell him, but she is alive, whole, _real_ when he touches her, callused fingers sliding over skin and up into secret places _they_ never touched, the only places _they_ left alone. Places she'd once thought no one else but Simon would ever touch, but Simon only touches Kaylee ( _Kaylee Kaylee_ , like soft curls of smoke around the engine the word slips from his lips when he touches her) and River knows where she's not wanted.

More importantly, River knows where she _is._

She isn't sure when things changed. It was after Miranda, she knows that much, after she'd saved them the way they've all saved her. He especially is her savior now, taking up her cross, though he would hate to hear her say it, would never see it that way at all. After Miranda, after months of sitting beside him, learning to steer Serenity with him, she started waking up gasping, dreaming of different hands ( _his hands_ ) on her body, a different tongue ( _his tongue_ ) in her mouth, and in the morning he'd avoid her eyes when they talked, scared again, in a different way.

She doesn't like it when he's scared -- makes him mean and stupid -- so she tries to show him it's okay, she wants him too, hands and tongue and cock, these things are of him, but they're not the whole of him, and she wants that too. Whole of him fills a hole in her, and she's not just making a crude joke like Jayne would. She means it.

She thinks that's why he doesn't fight as hard as he could -- she tells him he's helping her, making her better, stronger, more herself when he touches her, and he wants -- needs -- to believe it, though he won't admit he needs belief at all, same as he won't admit he wants -- needs -- her. In the darkness of Serenity's hallways, when everyone else is safe in their bunks, she pulls him close and he doesn't push her away. She whispers her thanks and her secrets in his ear while his fingers stroke up her thighs and his mouth is hot and wet on her nipples through the flimsy material of her dress. She curls into and around him, skating her hands over his shoulders and down his back, breath and bodies entwining in their complicated dance. She slides her fingers through the soft brush of his hair, ticklish against her palm, but he always stops her before she can do more, won't let her touch him the way he touches her, just one more line he's drawn that she wants him to cross.

He's all locked-down borders manned with sentries and patrolled with armed guards, but she slips in through the cracks, opening herself to him body and soul so she can open him as well, and start to heal the hurts that have festered so long and so deep inside him.

The first time, she cornered him, drunk and in the dark, the walls of Serenity cradling them close, keeping them safe as she guided his hands to her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, as she pressed begging lips to his jaw and cheek and mouth, tongue speaking a language she didn't know she knew until she spoke it with him, turning _no_ into _yes_ into _please_. His eyes are haunted and he will never forgive her but he will, he does, he _has to_. He hates himself instead ( _I know you ain't got no wiles. I could resist wiles,_ he mumbles into her hair as she gasps and clutches his shoulders, pressing herself up against his hand; the honesty of her need undoes him), and she knows it will take her longer to fix that, maybe as long as it will take to fix herself, and maybe just as impossible, but she has to try. For him, for herself -- for Serenity -- she has to try.

Each time he touches her, he swears it will be the last, that he's strong enough to say no, and she tells him that the strength in him, the strength she needs, is to say yes, to give what she takes as a gift, and take what she gives as a blessing.

When he walks past her now, she makes sure their bodies touch -- it makes her skin feel alert, the way her mind does sometimes, when she can hear the 'verse and everyone in it, picking out separate voices singing different parts, but it's all the same song in the end. Bodies are like that, too. She knows the biology behind what she's feeling when they touch, but she thinks it must be something more than chemistry or biology that makes her feel like she could fly, that she could shed her skin and become something altogether different, something totally new when his hands move over her, shattering her, and then holding her together as she comes apart.

She brushes against him in the hallway, runs her fingers along his when he passes the salt at dinner, because she wants him to remember he does that for her, that she could do it for him, if he'd let her.

She wants to make him smile, make him laugh, bring him some measure of peace and comfort and joy, the way he has for her, and the more he tells her no, the more determined she is to make him understand. She touches him, and hopes he can feel it's not wrong, can't be and still feel this right, this good. They fit together in ways neither ever expected -- like tiling on a tessellated plane.

The others would pity her if they knew. They would all think he's using her because he can't have what he really wants, but she can read his mind, and she flows through his thoughts when they're together, and when they're apart. She thinks he might not hate himself so much for it if he believed she was a substitute, if he wasn't getting what he won't admit he really wants, but he knows he wants her, and hates it, thinks it makes him wrong, like those _tiansha de emo_ , taking advantage of a broken girl.

She tries to tell him he's not like _them_ \-- his hands are warm and strong when he touches her, never cold, never hurtful -- but he doesn't understand. He listens best to the beat of her heart, the hitch of her breath, the way she arches and shakes beneath his hands. Instinct and care will see them through, she thinks, where words just tangle them both up inside, too many false meanings in short strings of letters, instead of one true meaning in each brush of lips and breath of air.

She fumbles with the buttons on his pants, eager and anxious all at once, and trying to focus with need humming in her veins from the way his fingers move inside her, the in-and-out thrust always counterbalanced by the circling of his thumb, three hundred sixty degrees clockwise. She tries every time to make an equation of desire, to hold off the blissful moment of release just a little longer, until she figures it out.

He grunts hoarsely when she gets the buttons open and shoves his trousers down; she can feel the sound rumble through his body. She wraps her fingers round him -- never done this part before, though she's watched Kaylee with Simon, and Zoe once with Wash, and tiptoed her way through Inara's dreams.

"River," he says, his lips against her jaw, teeth sharp on her skin as he pushes her up, Serenity's metal wall cold against her back. She hooks a leg around his hips and swallows hard, but she can't stop it -- one more twist of his thumb and the pressure breaks; she is coming, the black behind her eyes now dappled with white sparks, the fierce pulse of pleasure beating through her. She draws a shuddering breath and another, and Mal is the only thing keeping her from disintegrating into millions of tiny seeds that would grow into lilies if he planted them.

Body still riding the aftershocks, she doesn't feel more than a momentary twinge of pain as he pushes slowly inside her, his forehead sheened with sweat as he whispers to her, his hands tightening on her ass, holding her steady.

"River," he says again, and she says, "Mal. _Please_."

He begins moving, gently at first, rocking into her, and she wraps both legs around his hips now, cradles his head against her breast, reveling in the feel of him inside her. The voices in her head recede and then still when he thrusts; only two people in the 'verse now, him and her, flowing together, becoming one flesh.

The pressure is rebuilding inside her, the same but different this time, but before she can quantify the differences, explore the responses of her body to his in this new way, he is shaking apart in her arms, spilling himself inside her, little seeds that won't find purchase within her. At least, not this time. In the future, though.... She files that thought away for examination later, though she thinks she likes the idea.

When he's done, forehead resting on her shoulder, breathing still ragged and heart still racing, she lowers her trembling legs to the deck and he leans against her, pressing her back to the wall, his weight a warm comfort and his thoughts empty of fear and self-loathing for a brief moment.

"River," he says when he finally looks up, and third time's the charm, she knows, in all the old fairy stories from Earth-That-Was. He's tied himself to her as surely as they're both tied to Serenity now, even if he doesn't know it yet. "This can't be happening any more." His voice is hoarse and he holds her face in his hands, finally forcing himself to meet her eyes. She hopes he sees himself reflected there the way _she_ sees him -- brave and strong and gentle -- instead of mean and bad and scared. "It ain't right. I know you don't know no better, but I _do_ , and--"

"It's not wrong," she says, stroking his cheek. "Can't feel this right and still be wrong."

He closes his eyes, shakes his head. "Just 'cause it feels good don't make it right."

"If the solution isn't beautiful, it's wrong." She leans forward, rests her forehead against his, awash in another soft burst of joy that he admits she makes him feel good. "This is our beautiful solution. Broken pieces mending whole, becoming something new together. This is beautiful, Mal. _We_ make it beautiful. _We_ make it right."

She can feel the hesitation in him, the brief moment his fingers tighten on her skin, reluctant to let her go, but he steps back, leaving her -- leaving them both -- cold and alone, damp and sticky and exposed.

He hitches his trousers up and covers himself with his shirt. He says, "I wish I could believe that," and walks away before she can argue, promising himself he won't let it happen again. He is strengthening his resolve, making himself a stone against her.

He has forgotten that stone is always shaped by river.

end

***

 _tiansha de emo_ = goddamn monsters

*

**Author's Note:**

> River paraphrases Richard Buckminster Fuller, who once said: "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."


End file.
